"First and foremost, I want to make clear that we do not support or condone, nor will we publish, hate speech," Reidy wrote, according to BuzzFeed News. Threshold was founded in 2006 with what The New Yorker described as a "politically conservative mission", publishing authors like Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove, Michelle Malkin and Dick Cheney.Įarlier this week, BuzzFeed News obtained a letter from Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy, assuring its authors - many of whom had expressed concern over Yiannopoulos' book deal - that the publisher was taking their displeasure seriously.
ROXANE GAY STATEMENT TRUMP HOW TO
Like Gay's How to Be Heard, Dangerous, an autobiography, was also picked up by an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Threshold Editions. In articles for Breitbart and in public talks, Yiannopoulos had said things like "birth control makes women unattractive and crazy" Black Lives Matter is "the last socially acceptable hate group in America", and "feminism is cancer". Bannon, US President Donald Trump's chief White House strategist and senior counsellor, was the executive chairman of Breitbart, where Yiannopoulos works. Adherents of the alt-right are known for espousing racist, anti-Semitic and sexist points of view. His caustic viewpoints on women, minorities, Muslims and immigrants have made Yiannopoulos a de-facto mouthpiece for the "alt-right" movement, short for alternative right, a small, far-right movement that seeks a whites-only state. He has stirred up controversy at universities across the country during speaking engagements and as recently as Wednesday canceled an event at UCLA because students there could not accommodate his "long list of requirements" for a February 2 campus visit, reported the Los Angeles Times. His incendiary and racist remarks about Ghostbusters actress and Saturday Night Live comedian Leslie Jones on Twitter got him permanently banned from the platform in July 2016. Yiannopoulos is a Greek-born, British writer who thrives on the publicity he generates by being outrageous. Gay, the daughter of Haitian immigrants, told the audience that the $US250,000 ($331,000) advance Yiannopoulos received for his forthcoming book, Dangerous, exceeded the advances for her first five books, reported the IDS. "I felt like that was a stand I could take to say, 'We're not going to normalise racism.'" "I just couldn't sleep at night thinking, 'They're just going to give him a platform for hate?'" Gay told those in attendance, according to the Indiana Daily Student, the university's student newspaper.
Gay, who is touring right now for Difficult Women, spoke to a packed house Wednesday at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, just hours after news of her severed deal with Simon & Schuster broke. The action, Gay told BuzzFeed News, was her "putting my money where my mouth is". "My editor emailed me last week and I kept staring at that email in my inbox and finally over the weekend I asked my agent to pull the book." I just couldn't bring myself to turn the book in," Gay said in a statement to BuzzFeed News, which first reported her decision. "I was supposed to turn the book in this month and I kept thinking about how egregious it is to give someone like Milo a platform for his blunt, inelegant hate and provocation. Dangerous, by Milo Yiannopoulos, published by Simon & Schuster.